1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a hard disk driver apparatus, and more specifically to a hard disk driver apparatus including a flying head slider which is movable between a loading position and an unloading position facilitated by air flow generated from rotation of a record medium.
2. Description of the Background Art
As is well known in the art, a hard disk driver apparatus employs a flying head slider loading system of a contact start/stop type. In this apparatus, a magnetic head-mounted on a flying head slider is in contact with a surface of a disk when the disk is stopped, while being kept away from the disk when the disk is started to rotate due to air flow generated by rotation of the disk. Although the conventional hard disk driver apparatus of this type has a simple structure, there is a disadvantage in that the disk and the slider are eventually damaged due to contact of the disk with the slider upon loading and/or unloading. In addition, it is necessary to provide a slider landing zone on the disk, which serves for loading and unloading of the slider. The zone should be a non-record track on which no data is present.
In order to eliminate such disadvantages, another apparatus of a non-contact slider loading type is disclosed in Japanese Utility Model laid-open publication No. 61-145380. A flying head slider of the disclosed apparatus is placed in its unloading position where the slider is spaced apart from the disk, when the disk is stopped. On the other hand, when the disk begins to rotate, the slider is lowered to reach its loading position where the slider is close to the disk. In such an apparatus, the slider usually does not contact the disk so that both the slider and the disk are subject to less damage in comparison with the contact start/stop type.
Recently, electromagnetic waves having a shorter wave length than previously utilized have been used for increasing the storage capacity of the disk. For this purpose, the distance between the slider and the disk in the loading position is smaller. However, since the slider is supported by a gimbal arm which is elastically deformable, the slider vibrates upon moving from the unloading position to the loading position. In the worst case, it is likely that the slider may undesirably contact the disk, resulting in damage to either the slider or the disk.